


used to the darkness

by Positive



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Dave | Technoblade-centric, Gen, Magic, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Not Canon Compliant, Potions, Realistic Minecraft, Swordfighting, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:14:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Positive/pseuds/Positive
Summary: Technoblade attempts to enjoy his retirement, but the remnants of his past come to seek his head. Assassins from the kingdom he left as a child want to kill him, and Techno has to resort to the thing he seems to be best at.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 132





	used to the darkness

Technoblade’s breath misted the air as sat on his porch, a warm cup of tea warming his freezing hands.

He liked the cold. Majorly uninhabitable. No one but him and his thoughts.

He smiled to himself as he took a sip. He didn’t miss the people he left after retirement.

He regretted not making them see. See what government can do to a society, a people….a family.

Words can only go so far, and then the sword always takes its place.

He blew softly on his cup, and as he looked down a strand of hair fell in front of his eyes. He frowned. This is why he liked his mask. His hair never got in the way.

He tossed his head before taking another sip.

The cold was making him slowly lose the feeling in his toes. He debated going back inside to finish the rest of his tea.

“ _I’ve already woken up_ ,” He thought to himself, and got up, careful not to step on his cape.

He slipped inside, setting his tea down on his kitchen table. A spike of pride shot threw him at the little cabin he had built for himself.

Perfect to be alone. Just like he wanted.

His pig skull mask was hung menacingly next to the door on a hook. He gazed at it, forlorn.

The things he did in that thing. What it manifested inside him.

Technoblade descended his ladder to his meditation room and set about the work of slowly lighting the candles that littered the room. He briefly considered the possibility of a fire hazard as he lit one dangerously close to his bookshelf, but put the thought away as a problem for another day. He sat down on the soft carpet in the center of the room and began his meditation.

The majority of the time during these scheduled meditations, it was to simply silence the voices that whispered in his mind.

For blood.

For anarchy.

For victory.

This specific time, however, he had a job to do. In the echoes of his mind, he knew he had to practice. In his time at L’Manburg, he had grown weak to influence, not only from people like Wilbur and Schlatt but to the other side.

Some things on this earth just can’t be explained. Like floating skeletons and zombies that come out at night, to the vast expanses of hell and the end.

For the others, they accepted it as truth, and something to not put too much thought on. If they did think, what could they do? Sometimes the unexplained is best left that way for people too weak to dive into the unknown.

For someone like Technoblade, it was a challenge.

His past had given him the foundation for translating the whispers of the creatures of the dark. When you open yourself to them, they hold nothing back. For Techno, it was a struggle of dominance.

If you lose, you become one of them. And Technoblade was becoming dangerously close.

That’s why he had to go into hiding. He had to be away from temptation. From the violence.

He had to find himself again.

Techno’s meditation gave him surreal senses. He could feel the earth beneath his house and the caves underneath. The grass poking out through the thick snow. The quiet.

He even felt the five sets of footprints that entered into the boundaries of what Technoblade deemed his land. He grimaced in his physical form.

He broke out of his meditation and climbed up the ladder, leaving the candles burning.

What he had to do wouldn’t take long.

He looked over at his half-finished tea, and walked over to the kitchen, taking out two small vials from a cupboard and dumping the powders into his tea. A red one, and shimmery gold. He swished it around and chugged the cold tea with a grimace.

Technoblade breathed deeply before walking over to where his mask hung and picking it up, staring deeply into its sockets before sliding it over his face. He grabbed his netherite sword from beside the door, slid it into his hilt, and checked to make sure his coin was in his pocket like it always was.

He opened his door to five diamond swords pointed at his face. Each assassin had a different colored mask that covered their noses and mouths. Red, green, blue, black, and white.

“Well, this hardly seems fair.” Technoblade graveled out. He hadn’t spoken to another person in weeks.

He held his arms up in mock surrender, a smirk playing on his face.

"To whom do I owe the pleasure?" Techno asked.

The middle assassin, black, spoke from underneath his mask, "King Eirik."

Technoblade sighed, "Then I assume you follow the creed?"

They showed no response. Technoblade was getting impatient.

"If you follow the creed, step back. Fight me with honor." Technoblade sneered.

Surprisingly, they all stepped back, walking backward off his porch and into the snow cover plain.

"I know what you're here for," Techno said as he unclipped his cloak, letting it tumble to the ground. "No need for the formalities. My uncle wants me dead."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his coin, turning it over in his palm.

"I don't see why….I have no intention in reclaiming the throne," he thought out loud, "...Though that doesn't really matter, does it? Have to eliminate the bloodline and all that."

The assassins took their time, spreading out around him as he walked out into the field to meet them.

Technoblade flipped his coin into the air. The coin glowed, shifting, and when it came back into Techno’s hand it had become his faithful trident. He smirked as a few assassins took a hesitant step backward.

The assassin behind him made the first move, running to him. Techno whipped around as he heard the crunching on snow, and threw the trident straight at him. It pierced through the man's armor with a sickening crunch. The trident continued to sail, carrying the assassin with it until it speared a tree.

The assassin coughed up blood, reached out helplessly to pull the trident out of his body, wrapping his now bloodied hands around the prongs.

Techno reached out his hand and called the trident back to him just as another assassin charged him.

Technoblade felt his hand wrap around the spear and immediately did a downward strike, meeting the other man's sword with a clash. Technoblade grimaced, jumping back. He heard someone run up from behind him and turned to meet them, striking up with the trident into their stomach.

It pierced successfully, and Techno yanked the trident back just in time to dodge the strike from the sword the assassin made in vain before crumpling to the ground.

Technoblade ducked his head just as the black-masked assassin from before swiped through the air in the space where his head would have been.

Technoblade ran in an attempt to get some distance, skidding along the snow and turning back to his enemies. He willed the trident to turn back into his coin and pocketed it, drawing his sword instead.

The black, white, and red assassins advanced towards him.

The other two were dead on the ground, their blood staining the white snow.

The black mercenary charged forward, slicing downwards and meeting Techno’s sword. He sliced again and Technoblade stepped back, leaving room as he pulled his leg back, kicking him in the abdomen. The mercenary fell back with a thud.

Technoblade saw something out of the corner of his eye and then felt a blossom of pain near his ankle. The red assassin had cut into his lower thigh, blood pouring onto the ground. Technoblade hissed and sliced at the red assassin, but he blocked it, a clang echoing through the clearing.

For a while, all Techno could do was defend as the three assassins advanced on him. The gash in his leg was starting to cause him pain.

The strength potion he had taken earlier was beginning to wear off. He had to act quickly.

Technoblade waited for the white mask to swing and he tossed his sword into his non-dominant hand, ducking and using his other hand to make an uppercut into the mercenary's jaw. He stumbled back, dropping his sword.

That was Techno’s opening.

He tossed his sword into his dominant hand again, standing up fully, and made a wide swipe through the air.

The white mercenary's head landed on the ground, his body following soon after.

The other two assassins didn’t miss a beat, descending onto Technoblade as one. As Technoblade was focusing his energy on the black assassin, the red sliced at his shoulder, cutting a deep gash that made Techno gasp. He gritted his teeth and turned to the red, his eyes flashing in anger. Technoblade slashed haphazardly, pushing him back.

The black assassin wasted no time, descending on Techno again. Technoblade gritted his teeth, knowing that his strength potion was dwindling by the second.

Techno dodged the black’s sword swipe and swung his sword downwards once he was to the left of the assassin and cut off his hand. The black assassin’s sword fell to the ground, the hand still gripping it.

The black assassin let out a scream, and Techno slashed at his stomach. The assassin’s bowels spilling onto the ground as he died.

Techno looked up at the final assassin as he took two cautious steps back. Techno flicked his sword, some of the blood that caked it splattering to the ground.

The strength had worn off. But the red assassin didn’t know that.

“You don’t have to die,” Techno graveled out, careful not to limp despite the gash in his leg, “You have a message to deliver.”

Techno slid his sword back into his hilt and took out his coin, transforming it into his trident.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” He said, stepping forward.

The assassin stayed where he was. “What message?”

“Tell King Eirik...that if he really wants me dead….” Techno said, advancing further on the man till he had his trident pointing at his throat, “Then he can come to kill me himself.”

Techno pressed his trident against the assassin’s neck, drawing blood.

“Until then, let me enjoy my _fucking_ retirement.” He spat, and lifted his trident off of the man’s skin.

The man took two hesitant steps back, and then turned, sprinting back from the direction he came. Techno heard as the assassin formed a portal and jumped inside, heading back to his kingdom.

Technoblade collapsed, using his trident to hold himself up, breathing deeply to withstand the pain. He hobbled to his house, and wrenched open the door, tossing his trident onto the floor and flinging open the drawers in his kitchen, grabbing bandages. He carefully wrapped them around his leg, and painstakingly repaired his shoulder. After he properly wrapped himself up, he stumbled over to his potion cabinet. He carefully prepared a healing potion, drinking it down the second he was finished.

He felt the warmth envelop him and then set to work.

\----

The mercenary he had speared against the tree was still alive as Technoblade walked over to collect his body. A quick stab through the throat ended his slow death.

Technoblade piled up all four bodies onto a mound away from his house and made a large bonfire to burn the corpses. He tossed each one onto the woodpile, and set it ablaze, the carcasses slowly burning away.

\----

That’s how Philza found him. He came to visit Technoblade and found him staring deep into the bonfire, the smell of burnt people filling the air. Philza looked around at the field: the footprints and the bloodstained snow.

Techno lifted his head as Philza approached. He looked back at Technoblade and his drenched tunic.

“What happened here?” Philza questioned.

Silence fell between them. Technoblade looked back into the fire.

“What I always have to.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically connected to my story "the deepest sighs, the frankest shadows". The Technoblade in this is the same Techno in TDSTFS. So count this as a side story to that I guess. 
> 
> This is dedicated to those couple of people who wanted more mysterious Techno, and expressed positivity to his briefly mentioned backstory. Those comments pushed me to come up with this idea.
> 
> Please consider leaving a comment, I respond to every one. This was my first time writing a fight scene and I'd love to have some feedback, advice, or encouragement. 
> 
> Follow me on twitter at fairest_of_lame if you'd like to message me or look at my terrible twitter drama takes.


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